I don't doubt jishaq's 200Hz crossover - there were some really unwise bass management choices made for multichannel analog outputs on both Pioneer and Panasonic players. (Panasonic liked 120Hz at one time, and may still favor that.) Your Pioneer may not have the same crossover point. With the 990, though, you likely have the speakers all set to "large" - which should bypass any such crossovers inside the player, allowing the Model 990 to get the bass management right.

Which makes me wonder... If the 48av's bass management is defeatable, it wouldn't be an issue for users pairing it with the Model 990. If the bass management is part of the analog circuit, though, there's nothing to be done except shrug and question the sanity of whoever at Pioneer signed off on that particular design decision.

It surprised me too, and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Upon re-reading the AVSforum thread, I think I've misunderstood what they are speaking about. I think they are stating that the Pioneer DV-48AV applies a *low*-pass filter to the 5.1 analog subwoofer output. Given the context of the messages, that makes the most sense.

If the price is right on eBay, I'll still pick up the DV-48AV and just deal with any shortcomings its 5.1 analog outs have, until I can upgrade my 990 pre/pro to one that has HDMI input.

I'll follow up with my findings.

-Jeff

You're right, Gonk, my Maggie 1.6's are set to "large" since I have no subwoofers, and on "The Dark Knight" the bass seemed "adequate" (as Rolls-Royce dealers used to say when asked the car's horsepower).

Speaking of Maggies, I wonder greatly how the new 1.7 will do on bass, and also on reducing the vertical directionality in the high end which to me is the 1.6's chief SQ weakness.

I think the Maggies are intrinsically limited in their bass output by their very nature, so I don't think the 1.7s will be able to stretch much lower.

I built a pair of dipole woofers (each with 2 12" sub drivers) and a custom active crossover from John at musicanddesign.com to go with my 1.6s, and now they truly are large. Flat response all the way down to 25 Hz. Then two big subs to get the last 8Hz or so below that. You are definitely missing some stuff in The Dark Knight.

But for music, I usually just bypass bass management and don't use the subs.

How come you aren't running any kind of low end augmentation for yours, out of curiosity?